Give away furniture for free

Elliot Tatelman from Jordan’s Furniture joined Boston Herald Radio yesterday to talk about his company’s “Pennant Fever” promotion and the company’s business model:

Q: Why are you offering a Red Sox playoff deal again?

A: What happened was there were 2, 500 families that actually won free furniture — it was over $30 million of checks that we gave back — but every single person who won told everybody they knew because it was like bragging rights.

Q:This time around you’ve got a different twist with the Pennant Fever contest?

A: We started it in 2007 and we’ve had “Win the World Series” a couple of times and we’ve had “Hit the Ball.” You remember the ball out in centerfield? If a Red Sox had hit that ball all of your furniture would be free. And this year, one of the things that we did do is we opened a store in New Haven, Conn. A big store. So obviously we have a lot of Yankees fans in Connecticut. So we said, “Now what are we going to do?” So that really forced us to really think about what we could come up with and this year we really put a major twist on it. The Boston-New York rivalry is like no other rivalry in sports, period. And the idea that the two of them play each other for the pennant has happened. It actually happened in 1999, it happened in 2003 and it happened in 2004. So we worked with the insurance company for these to insure us and hopefully it can happen again this year and if it does everything you buy is free.

Q: Between the two teams you’ve got like 60 pennants. Elliot, have you thought this through? You may be giving away free furniture very well again this year?

A: I hope so. I hope so, because that can be the best thing to happen to make all those people happy.

Q: Talk to us about what people can expect at Jordan’s Furniture.

A: You know, if you’ve never been to a Jordan’s, we’re a different kind of operation. It’s not just selling furniture. We have entertainment, we make it fun to shop and, I mean, we have a city made out of jelly beans, we have IMAX 3-D theaters, we have water shows. We have the enchanted village where we put through almost 200, 000 people in six weeks. I mean, we do a lot of crazy things because life is too short.

Q: And you’re famous for being so good to your employees. I think you brought them to Bermuda one time, didn’t you?

A: Oh, you remember that. That’s another one that everybody who went told everybody. Yeah. It was May 10.